Many attempts have been made to resolve the familiar problem in which a baby's hands are too small to properly hold a bottle. Among adults, it may also be the case that due to various physical disabilities, it may be difficult to properly hold a bottle, especially one that may be filled with liquid. One known approach has been to fasten various handles to the bottle. U.S. Pat. No. 5,480,043 to Wingo discloses a two-handle collar wherein the handles are of a size and arranged at an angle to facilitate holding of the bottle by the small hands of an infant. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,943,017 to Ennis provides a pair of handles at either end of an elastic band wherein the band is designed to be stretched around the circumference of a bottle thereby securing the two handles to the outside of the bottle, making it easier for small or disabled hands to hold.
Although the prior art facilitates the use of a bottle by adapting the means for gripping it, the bottle may still be difficult to hold. Regardless of its shape, angle and design, any handle must still be gripped by its user in order to be effective. In the case of an infant, a baby's hands may not be sufficiently strong or the baby may not yet have developed sufficient manual dexterity to grip the handles of the bottle for an extended period of time. The result is that even those bottles equipped as known in the prior art are likely to be dropped frequently, frustrating attempts to train the baby to feed itself. Similarly, an invalid may not be able to hold a handle at all depending on the nature of the disability.
As a result, there still remains a need for a device to make a bottle easier to hold for an infant and for those with a wide range of disabilities.